Categories
art Rant

Suddenly Inspired…

…to write a film. But, guess what’s getting in the way? YOU GUESSED IT! The lieing twat of Westchester. That was something else he sneered at. My film making. “Oooh,” he chided, “It’s shot on tape.” Yeah, fuck face..shot on tape..went to Sundance nominated for a British Academy award. He really tried to undermine my confidence. Sneery cock whore that he is…

Ok, relapse! That’s what happens. I remember just how ‘ironic’ he is about anyone who tried to achieve anything..like kids or films. I wonder if he can communicate at all with the artists he is meant to represent when he is so desperate to be one himself.

He did make a sort of film. A high school parody. He thought it was HILARIOUS.

How will he ever encourage the best out of his clients? Unless he is getting fucked by them of course.

Wanna know something funny? He loved reading my blog when I was writing shit about other people. It’s a bit uncomfortable now tho isn’t it JB?

Hahhaha.

RENTER ALERT!!!

OK, yesterday, when I got back to the apartment in Hollywood (almost finished packing) there was a vicious note from Viken Douzdjian’s two-bit lawyer demanding his money back for the rental. Viken is a surgeon from Portland Oregon who rented the house for 7 people for $250 a night. He arrived and left immediately because the ‘TV was too small.’ and ‘There was a stain on the carpet.’ Let me remind you again Viken..that’s why it’s $250 a night rather $2, 500 a night like the guy next door or $25, 000 a night like the houses on the PCH. This surgeon from Portland told me to alter a cheque that he had misprinted then recalls the cheque! What a fucking twat. Then..get this..he tells me that he can’t stay in the house of a homosexual.

This surgeon better not be cutting you open if you are gay..cause he hates us gays!

Thank God I keep every email..including the one where he tells me to alter the cheque. Read the fucking contract dick-wad surgeon, homophobic, LIAR.

Viken Douzdjian is a homo hating, rental con-man who can’t seem to read the contract he signed. He joins the Renter’s From Hell Hall of SHAME.

Viken..let me introduce you to Irene Brown from Maud Place Hawaii and Dave Stewart from who gives a shit ville. Dave did the ‘we are Christians and can’t stay in your house’ bullshit.

“There’s PORNOGRAPHY in your house.”  they squealed like pigs after finding some funny postcards in a draw..without nudity I might add . Actually, I thought Dave was gay when I met him. My gaydar went off like an Amazonian dawn chorus. Mrs Dave probably put him through Christian gay-boy rehabilitation…so they could have those ugly kids.

Fuck Christians.

All of you.

Oh yeah, and when I spoke to Viken’s moronic lawyer I tried to make a point about Jews and Gays in the concentration camps and why homophobia should not be colluded with in the same way we have no truck with anti-Semitism.

He thought I was being an anti-semite..not realizing of course that JB is a Jew, my sponsor is a Jew..and so was my GRANDFATHER.

Fucking idiot.

I am in NYC. Alive..although maybe dying…here for fashion week. Hope I don’t bump into the lying fuck face.

Categories
Malibu

Shrinking/Shirking

Andrew

Had to take a couple of days away from my blog.  Firstly, my reason for writing it has become skewed. Secondly, when all one has to write about is the blog itself… hmmm. You understand.

Malibu.  The garden has been totally cleaned up by the new gardeners.  This annual sweep gives me so much pleasure.  The most rewarding $800 a man could ever spend.

Exciting news:  friends are seriously thinking about buying the house.  When they contacted me I was relieved then I began to wonder why I was selling it? Where else in the world would I be able to live like this?  The view, the land, the house… it’s all so beautiful.

The repaired road will make it so much better living here (I can walk to the local shops) but rather than thinking it would make it better for me… my fucked up head thinks it would make it better for someone else.  That’s insane!  I deserve it too.

I had to get away from the blog because I was indeed writing about Jake far too much and whilst I needed to I also have to stop.  This is the problem with obsessive thinking and who ever wrote I should get off the Jake thang is right… I really have to start thinking beyond the object of my obsession.

Just when you run out of good ideas God throws you a life line.  My friend Anna is moving into the house with me.  She is having a blast with her new film (traveling all over the world) but needs a place to live. We are very similar in as much as we both daily invent our lives.  So, next Tuesday I have a room-mate.

My friend Ashley needs a place too so we are all going to live here together.  The only remaining booking is for October so we are going to vacate for that.

I achieve so much more when I am with other like-minded people. Whenever Anna is here I get important things done that would otherwise remain undone.  I can be mother hen, make breakfast, organize walks, sit down and write.  All I have to overcome is the obsessive urge to clean the house and keep order.  I have to let that go.

Because I know that he reads this I often think of him when I am writing.   It’s horrible.  Trying to keep the flame burning.  Fragile, timid beautiful Jake.  I want to remember him kindly.  I really do.  I don’t want to believe that he came into my life to take whatever he needed.

Manhunt?  I want to be on Manhunt because he was on Manhunt.  I want to meet men because he met men.  I want to in spite of my own healthy needs.

The Manhunt thing is interesting.  It has taken no time at all to be totally disinterested in that site.  It cannot serve me.  Why do I go there?   Real people can serve me.  Living in fantasy around what could be only leads to disaster… as we have witnessed these past few months.

I have been attending gay AA meetings, connecting with my sober comrades.  Trying not to be negative, understanding I still sit in a great deal of fear around gay men… I begin to relax.  There is a community of men and women at my disposal who are more than willing to open their arms to me.

I am, after all, a rather well-known gay man in recovery.  So I should lead by example.

Coming up to my sober birthday on October 1st.  Traditionally this has always been a time of great reflection.   A time to remember what I gave up to become the man I am now.  If I had continued along the path of least resistance… I may very well be dead.  I will write about that last day of using on October 1st.

Fly East tomorrow for a few days.  Have to take art to NYC.  I really dread being in the city just in case I bump into him.  I don’t know what I would do.  It’s like when I got sober… those first few months I could be around people drinking but I could not be around anyone taking drugs,  it was too triggering.   As I have said before, he is not real… he is a cypher.

As he shrinks away I attempt to own the possibilities.  I am left with so much!   I am left with all of this… the view, the hope, the love and of course the very human fight to survive.  The fight to live.  The fight to make art.  The fight to breath in the new day.

I may very well have thrown away this past year obsessing over him.  I pray that I learned something useful from knowing him.  Please don’t let it have been a total waste?

My Australian friend Andrew visited yesterday.  I met him in Sydney ten years ago.  What a delicious man he is.  I think you would all agree?

My AA sponsor told me in no uncertain terms that I was shirking from the very real health issue I have.  He told me that I have to get it seen to as soon as possible.

Categories
Malibu

Blogging…

Keeping what is in effect a public diary can have it’s glories and it’s defeats.  Ups and downs.  Well, we have all recently witnessed the downside.

When Jennie K was having a hard time with crazy stalker monsters contacting her she turned off her comments option.  I am considering doing the same.  What I realize now though is just how much the comments mean to me.  I enjoy that so many of you check in with me every day and it is those people who I imagine when writing this blog.

I have been thinking about the comments by Tres Triste.  It is most odd that he/she insinuated that I take down the pictures of Jake.   I mean, why should I? I have pictures of most of my friends in this blog.  He was not only my friend but also my lover.  The only reason that I hadn’t posted pictures of him before was that I had effectively climbed into his closet.  When I crawled out gasping for air I realized just how manipulated I had been.

It’s odd to think that someone who supposedly doesn’t know Jake would consider it an affront to his dignity to have his pictures on my blog.  Our holiday pictures.  I am guessing that Tres Triste thinks he would be ashamed to have his pictures associated with me.  Well, that may very well be the case but I am not buying into his shame.

30-year-old men are not children.  In fact, most 30-year-old men have children of their own.  They have responsible jobs.   They cannot claim to be naive adolescents.   They make decisions about who and what they want to do and then face the consequences of their actions.  As do I.

There is a beautiful line in the Stevie Nicks song Landslide that he might consider when he thinks about her, he could consider it..so might she.

“I’ve been afraid of changing because I built my life around you.”

Did you think I was thinking about Jake when I considered who or what I built my life around?  Well, I thought about drink and drugs and my lost daddy.  I thought about him too.

“I’ve been afraid of changing because I built my life around you.”

Every decision I take or make has a consequence.  It is up to me to think that through.  When he contacted me the outcome was clear.  When he kissed me he departed, once again, from his monogamous commitment to his girlfriend and would have to face a consequence.  We must never, ever underestimate the consequences of our actions.  Wether he was cheating with a woman or a man he was cheating.   As for him claiming youth as an excuse for his actions?  Honey, 29 is no youth.  Look at the lists of men killed in Iraq..most of them are younger than 29.

We are all naive about some things.  I was naive about Hollywood.  I was never naive about life tho.  I think I have always lived in the light.  It was his desire to crawl back into secrecy that finally made me ditch him.

I have no truck with secrets.  You know everything because I want it to be that like that.

There are moments when I think of him..but not in any way other than one might miss a drink after being a heavy drinker.  We had communicated almost every day in some way since we first met.  He is in the fabric of my being.  He rested in my most sacred heart for many months.  I am slowly washing that man out of my hair.

I was his most ardent supporter, his rock when he needed me.  I was on his side. I thought I could be there for him as he matured into an out gay man but I could not.  I regret having made that committment to him.

I return again and again to this question:  why didn’t he tell the truth sooner?

There is no reason in a liberal household in the modern world for a man not to be true to his nature.  To tell the truth about who he is.

It is a conundrum that has no end because only he can answer that question.   Frankly I am not interested, any longer, in anything he has to say about anything…so…I am left with the question.

I am left with the Manhunt account too.  It amuses me but I must tell you I am a little bit too eager to see who and what messages have been left for me.  A little bit too eager to meet new men and a little a bit too eager to revisit the site again and again.

Must keep this in check.  The paths wont get swept if I don’t.

I write every morning just before I start my day.  Presently I am looking over the ocean in Malibu. It is going to be a beautiful day.  Yesterday I swept and hosed the drive and the paths.  I wanted the garden to look beautiful for Jenny A who is presently staying in the guest apartment below.

I spent almost all of yesterday pottering around the garden, scrubbing the terracotta tile in the gazebo, weeding and generally decluttering the house.  I have a different attitude to being here since I last lived here.

Jenny arrived and we walked down to the new road with the dog.  We came home and Eric arrived for dinner.  We lit a huge fire and listened to Herbie Hancock and drank English tea.  I cooked and everyone went to bed.  It was simple.

We discussed Jenny’s cancer.  She was only given a 38% chance of living.

She said, “They gave me ten years to live.  Of course, that was five years ago..now I want another five years..”

Jenny saved my life.  It was she who I called this week 14 years ago to tell her that I couldn’t stop doing coke. It was she who took me to my first meetings and it was she who eased me into the recovery community.  I will always be thankful for that.

Our relationship has had its ups and downs.  We didn’t talk for two years after having a huge fight on a dusty road in Mexico but true friends always come back to each other.  Eventually.

Categories
Malibu Rant

I’m Getting Older Too…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM7-PYtXtJM&feature=player_embedded]

This is far better than the original…

I JUST REREAD THIS POST.  IT IS SO BORING!

Hahahaha

Without intensity and drama what becomes of me?

I woke up feeling really positive.  I am really beating this one.  Really.

A simple day.  I am losing weight.  I saw my reflection.  It gives me great pleasure to see a flat tummy.

I decided to give Manhunt a try as I had paid for that account to snoop on u know who.  It was good to get some interest from cute looking men but I felt as if I had come full circle since I was last living here.  At least I am being myself on Manhunt rather than disguised by some fake profile just to hear the reassuring ping of interest.

Almost immediately two men recognized me from the show and two friends.  It was fun.

Talked to realtor about what he wanted me to do to the house before we put it on the market this November.  He said nothing.  He said whoever bought it would probably tear it down.

I made jam.  I made a jam.  Strawberry jam.  Tomorrow I am going to finish up after the gardeners.   Today the little dog ran around after me in the garden.   We drove to Venice and ate breakfast at Sauce.  How quickly the staff get to know me.  They remember after just two visits what I have and how I like it.

I like that.  I like being taken seriously.

Scrambled, tomatoes..grilled.

Categories
Health

Blank Cheque

Reading over this entry I am reminded that perhaps a more pious life might suit me better that a life devoted to intensity.  Piety, we tend to use the word pejoratively,  saying more about our Godless world than the idea behind the action.

Today I crave piety, humility, silence..

Tres Triste urged me to go into one on one therapy.  I will have nothing to do with that.  I am bloated on my experience of one on one therapy.

I am, however, recommitted to the rooms of AA.  I know that they understand because I am just like them.  One on one therapy obviously suits many people but I don’t trust doctors, I don’t trust therapists who profit from the misery of others.  I resent paying them.  That I become their blank cheque.  In fact, I resent paying all doctors because I come from a country where visiting a doctor is free.

AA is free.  For fun and for free.

The simple fact is: I chose to abandon the principles of AA during the last few months.  Not taking a drink is just a small part of what we do in those rooms.  The rest of the time we help and guide each other toward sanity.  During the past months I deliberately abandoned my principles and let my alcoholic head run the show.

Many people ask why I moved to LA.  It really had nothing to do with film making.  I came to LA to be closer to the rooms of AA where I found comfort, solace and peace.  I made friends and found an extended family of people who understood me, who were always willing to forgive…no matter what.   I felt as if I needed, as if I NEED a great deal of forgiveness.

After a few years I became disgruntled and disillusioned with AA and went to fewer and fewer meetings.  As I did so my mind became more and more confused.  If I do not do the work to keep me sane I very quickly unravel.

I believe in the power of AA.  It is a church. It is my church.  For all to see during these past months I threw away my sanity because I wanted to use..so I did.  I used HIM.  He is not even real.  He is a bag of coke, a bump of crystal, my works, my baggy, my bottle, my paraphernalia.   He is not real.  Do I miss him?  I miss him like a glass of Montepulciano.  Full bodied red wine that I secretly want to drink when that day comes…and it very well might.  Never take your sobriety for granted.

You think that I have been cruel but I needed him out of my life and sometimes keeping your dealers number is the way back to active addiction.  If I had not jettisoned him that day I KNOW what would have happened.  We would have remained friends, we would have hooked up, my head just could not take it.

I napalmed the poppy fields.

This morning I chatted with Tim about the past.  A place one tends to reinvent as one gets older. It is invigorating having him there at the other end of the phone/skype.  He is in Worcester waiting for his triple bypass.  We are both waiting to have our skin cut open and our insides messed with by experts.

We talked about the power of prayer.  Our spiritual lives.  I needn’t tell you how important a loving God is in ones life but even though I know that prayer really works I am loathed to pray just in case is doesn’t.

That even God might let me down.

There is no doubt what so ever that for the past few months I used another man as my drug.  Intensity, fixation, obsession etc. etc.  Remember when you spent your last cent on drugs? When the getting and using was your main focus?  Remember the risks you took?  I am a crazy addict.  Yet, it is somehow easier for us to understand a man who cannot say no to drugs than a man who cannot say no to his addiction to people.  It is a far more complex and ultimately destructive addiction.

I think you have all been my witness to that.

I crave a healthy relationship with people who ever they might be, lover, family member, friend, shop assistant, telephone banker etc.    I am powerless and my life becomes unmanageable.  I am powerless over people, places and things.  This powerlessness causes me such misery. Powerlessness, vulnerability, weakness of any kind cannot be tolerated and as you have seen…I will bring you down if you challenge who I am, get to the heart of me.

I don’t think I am so different from most of you?

Yet, I most definitely am.  I do not think like normal people.

The idea that somehow, someday I will control and enjoy my thinking is the obsession of every abnormal thinker.

That was a quote from Bill Wilson with the word drink switched out for think.

Wether you believe it or not the rooms of AA are filled with men and women just like me.  When we sit together sharing our similarities and not our differences then I become aware of the presence of God.

I have struggled with SAA.

There is a big difference between being an alcoholic and a sex/love addict.  Alcoholics share the experience of abstinence.  Sex addicts do not.  The differences between sex addicts, when we share our stories, are all too apparent.  The similarities..scant.  Where there are few similarities I find myself divorced from God.

As I have reported in earlier posts, as the years pass and ones last drunk become a distant memory I am forced to deal with other more pressing, more destructive addictions.

The consequences of my actions are all too apparent.  I have rampaged like a spoiled child through another mans life.  Regardless of his part in it..I have only myself to blame.  As I have said before, it is none of my business assigning blame or becoming an interventionist for others.

We all learn by our mistakes, by the lies we tell, by the havoc we wreak.

So, today’s prayer:  God, relieve me from the bondage of self.  Help me be kind.  Let me be present.  Let me tell the truth.

Bind me so my arms do not flail,  gag me so I cannot speak, shackle me so I cannot walk, lay me down in some quiet place so I do not think.

Categories
Malibu

The Garden

It sure is odd living in Malibu again.  As if the past 18 months in Hollywood just never happened.   It has been raining and chilly all day today.  The gardeners came yesterday.  8 of them buzzing around the property dealing with the last 18 months worth of growth.  Today they returned to attack the larger trees and make them fire proof.  Lets face it though..there are no fires imminent.  This year has been British damp.  Poor little dog is shivering on the sofa.

12 people for lunch yesterday.  I flayed a chicken and cooked it with rosemary and lemons from the garden.

A great bunch.  Lots of love.  Surrounded by a great deal of unconditional love and conversation.  JAR and me are about the same age and have trodden the same path for many, many years but only really met here in LA.  She is possibly one of the most gorgeous women in the world.  Beautiful on the outside and equally beautiful on the inside.

It was a wonderful welcome back to Malibu.  Tomorrow night I am having dinner with Jenny A at SHLA.  She just drove from Mexico en route to London.  I am trying to fill my days with old friends.  They seem to more than adequately fill the void.

I am going to Palm Springs this weekend to a gay sober convention.  Meetings, meetings meetings.  Trying to connect with my tribe.  Then, rather annoyingly I have to go to NYC.  I am REALLY not looking forward to that.

When one can peek through at the various secret paths and vistas this place becomes magical.  You know, don’t you that I am putting the house on the market?  I am SURE it’s going to be impossible to sell but hey, let’s try shall we?

If I can get everything here and sell the house I will then try selling everything IN the house.  I wanna get out of here with one small bag of treasure and the Little Dog.

Travel light from now on.  Too much stuff.  Far too much STUFF.  Inside and outside my head.

The best part of that insightful comment I received the other day was the advice about getting strong around my health and finances.  I really have to deal with shit in those areas.

My back aches.  My balls ache.  My head hurts.  My fingers are dry.  My tummy is swollen.  My eyes are sore.

Yet, I am going in the right direction.  I really DO try and make a better life for myself.  I am not going to drink and take drugs but sometimes I think it would be a whole heap easier.  I bet I could meet a drug fucked loser in twenty seconds if I towed the line..went to gym, took drugs, drank at bars.

That was a joke everybody!

Just a joke.

Categories
Rant Uncategorized

OK, I Went Too Far

I went too far this time.  Vile beyond description.  Going quietly insane here.  Not so quietly.  Very publicly insane.  Somebody wrote to me imploring me to get help.  I don’t really know how.  The feelings are so overwhelming.  This has nothing to do with anyone currently in my life or recently out of it.    I was reading over my blog pre January and it’s like reading a different person.  I have become madder than the maddest man in madland.  Totally unhinged.

You can read what he/she said at the end of the DEAD WEIGHT blog.  For some odd reason it cut through everything and made sense.  I took notice.  8.43pm on Monday night I am taking notice.  I dread the morning when the fear sets in.  The fear and loathing.

You have to believe me I am battling with terrible demons at dawn.   Lost and empty.

Trying to juggle everything so I can get back to London and go to hospital.   Perhaps it’s just time to let the balls fall where they may and leave.

What he/she said about Jennie and the big dog was accurate.  I make myself vulnerable and then I punish those about me who see it.

Listen, I’m not trying to excuse myself.  Today there are no excuses for my behaviour.

I’m just trying to work it out.  Trying to navigate my way back to sanity.

There is no therapist.  I just have to accept what is happening and go home.  It’s time..but I’ve said that a million times.  It’s time to buy goats or leave a situation or..well..there are millions of examples of just how I say I want to do something then I never do it.

Rather flagellate him I flagellate myself.  This wasn’t how it was before.  I can read the difference between me then and me now.

I would really like to cry but I can’t.  Too many tears shed for nothing.

It’s amazing that in less than three weeks I will be celebrating a sobriety birthday.  Huh.  Perhaps I should just say I have one day.

The pain in my balls and back is getting worse but I think that this might just be in my head.

What would it mean if I just took one drink?  If I could drown these terrible feelings of loathing (and self loathing) I am overcome by?

A day off.  I want a day off from Duncan Roy.

Categories
Auto Biography Fashion Film Gay Whitstable

Manifest Destiny

As I was stacking boxes for my move I found a whole heap of diaries from the 1980’s.   The first day to day diary I kept was in 1982 and that was primarily because life had become so exciting.

We open the first book on this day September 5th, 1982.  I am 22 years old.

I am in Greece, on the island of Spetses staying with Sir John and Lady Russell.   I am still, at this time, Lord Rendlesham and have flown from Paris to Athens with an older nobleman called Guy de la Bedoyere of whom I had tired.

It was Guy’s Turner that I had marveled in Paris a few days earlier and whose butler, much to my horror, had washed in a washing machine my new Crolla ties.

The magazine Harper’s Bazzar had published the pictures of my infamous birthday party thrown for me by Scott Crolla at the Almeida Theatre.  Word was just reaching me in Greece that people were not at all happy.  Not at all.

If you click on the diary pages you can read the original entries.

I am in love with a beautiful Swiss boy called Robert and it is he that I wave goodbye to at the beginning of the entry.

The following year September 1983 there is no diary entry until I am released from prison on the 18th November.

September 1984 I am in rehearsal for Pornography: a Spectacle at the ICA in London.   There are huge articles about us all in Time Out, The Face and a now defunct London mag called City Limits.  I am living in Balham with a girl called Victoria.  By day I am in a play about gay pornography and by night I sleep with what was effectively my girlfriend.   So was the complexity of my life.  “Every gesture must be full and complete.” says Neil.  Neil Bartlett, director of the show.   During these days he and I began to fall out.  Irrevocably as it turned out.  When we left each other in Toronto months later after our North American tour we would never speak again.

September 1985 I am writing whilst stuck in a tunnel under the alps on a train from Paris to Venice.  My and Ivan Cratwright’s great adventure to Venice.  Staying, en route with Fred Hughes in Paris.

The diary for 1986 was missing but now found.  I will transcribe the entry.  I am yet again in another heterosexual relationship with a woman called Louise.  Why?

“Oh dear, I am in The General Trading Company off Sloan Square – Louise by my side.  Firstly I did not expect the Bahamian bombshell to come back to Whitstable to see me.  I rather thought that she might have given me a miss.

Yesterday before Louise arrived my pinks from Kingstone (?) Cottage arrived, they came to me in a brown cardboard box wrapped in local newspaper.  I planted them carefully, laying a foundation of stones for good drainage and surrounded the root system with peat. Maria helped out the best she could but spent the best part of yesterday drawing on the beach.   The day before that too she had worked hard on minimalist drawings incorporating the seascape – noticeably the foreshore and the horizon, terribly witty references to dead fish – (?) a family with prawn.

Ivan (Cartwright), we collected him from Whitstable station – Korda (Marshall) and I, he was in such a good frame of mind .  He prattled on about being arrested for car thieving and told a remarkable story about having been picked up on Park Lane (London) dressed only in a full length pink, synthetic fur coat, cowboy boots and a micro polka dot bikini!  He was picked up by a vast black men in a Buick.

Korda was completely freaked out by Ivan and as soon as he had the opportunity – left.  However, Ivan enchanted both Rachel (Whiteread) and (?) with his wit and intelligence.  We left for the pub far too late.  Ivan was wearing a pair of black cotton stockings, a black tee-shirt and short black sweat pants all topped off with this platinum blond hair and that face which as you know contorts like nobodies business.

We all slept late and woke early, that’s why when big bertha arrived (Louise) I was knackered.  We took off for a long adventurous but utterly fruitless journey to a closed park.  We did go to Beech House (Hospital School in Chartham)  I remembered yet again the horror of being taken there when I was a child – I remember that it was in that place that my life changed direction and I began to fight, so it was rather apt that I went there – my life again on the edge of a potential nightmare.  India,  8th October 10.15 – 9 months.   It rings in my ears.

As we drove to London yesterday Louise and (?) wrote that evening’s narrative.  For she as an eye for the ironic.  Firstly we locked ourselves out of Louise’s car and house then we saw the corpse of a man freshly killed, his legs crossed at the ankles, in the road.  His clothing partially hidden under a green waterproof police modesty blanket.  All of us knew that ambulances take only the living to be mended as best they can.  Death has no care.  I wondered about his family.  The pulse stopped and the narrative ending for him.  We drove slowly.  Later the image of the corpse quietened me and made me listen.

Louise is my strength whom I do not deserve.  Late last night I felt truly happy and secure.  That’s enough isn’t it?  Enough for a man who rarely lives safely, who is destined to become a lonely old man with personality problems.”

September 1987 I am a patient in the Henderson Hospital in Sutton Surrey where I spent the majority of that year.   I had a breakdown after a particularly bad bout of Hep B.  The Jay who would be fetching me from hospital is, of course, Jay Jopling.

For some odd reason I did not keep a complete diary in 1988.   I am not fully well from my breakdown but have decided to go to New York to see Ana Corbero and Colin Cawdor.  Paul Benny the artist was also staying in the huge apartment.  An entire floor of a converted girls school just over the Williamsburg Bridge.

There is no entry for these dates in 1989.

1990, my thirtieth year.  Living in Chelsea with Phillipa having what looks like a rather glamorous time.

1991 Coppers Bottom has opened at Sadler’s Wells.  Karen, the lead actress is threatening to walk.  I am now living with Anthony H. in South London.

1992 Tim and I are laughing about Damien Hirst not winning the Turner Prize that he seemed so certain to win.  I rather cruelly called Jay and told him how sorry I was whilst sniggering with Tim.

Not long before I get sober.  Just another 5 years.

After 1992 I kept a journal less and less.  I began every year enthusiastically writing everyday like I do now in the blog but by July had lost interest or life was simply too overwhelming.

Anyway, that was fun?

Categories
Gay Hollywood Malibu

malibu calling

The days pass with alarming speed.  The renters arrived yesterday and seem very pleasant.  I drive dolefully back to Hollywood.

Nothing seems to shake the occasional yet profound moments of self-doubt I experience since he was despatched.  I can only hope that these moments become fewer and fewer.  I have therapy this morning so will sup at the recovery table with my peers.

I woke at 4.30.   Made coffee, checked emails and tried to find some peace from my jumbled mind.  Walked the lil dog over the terrazzo and brass stars on Hollywood Boulevard.  Only me and the vagrants out so early.  A young, black drug fucked girl came up to me and grabbed my sweater.  Her eyes blank, her face unwashed and greasy.  I told her to leave me alone.

Since knowing that I am leaving Hollywood and deconstructing my home here I am eager to get going, to get the hell out of this place.

Another date last night.  His idea.  Still disinterested in everything.  Listless.  He texted me later and told me he wanted to make me a leather necklace.  Good God.  He wanted me to assess whether he had made a good impression or not.  In better times I might have thought more positively about him.  He had seven dogs.

I shaved my head yesterday.  My hair was long because he liked it that way.

Meeting Jake was an emotional disaster for me.   He lingers like the smell of raw sewage.

Polaxed by dubious longing for what could never be.

Categories
Malibu

Think Like Normal People

The house is rented for the week to nice sounding people from Texas.    They arrive at 1.

I am looking forward to spending what may be one of my last weekends in Hollywood.   I fill my suitcase with favorite things and return them to Malibu.

I am listening to BBC Radio Four, Gardeners Question Time.  One of my favorite programmes, the show was first broadcast in 1947.  My grandparents loved listening to it.  My mother loves it too.  I particularly enjoy listening to the advice of the more elderly gardeners they interview most weeks.  Softly spoken with thick regional accents. Even though I cannot take their advice directly because, of course, my high sierra garden is nothing like the lush, green gardens of England.

This morning they discussed string beans.

I often forget that I can tune in and listen to BBC radio live everyday.  It’s very reassuring listening to British news and opinion, current affairs and of course..The Archers.

Yesterday I trimmed the Bougainvillea around the terrace so one can eat breakfast and look over at the ocean.

I am struggling with my sad head, my achy balls, the move, the renovations and the house sale that I hope to make this year.

As for where next?  God only knows.

The door that regularly opened between me and my creative mind is jammed shut.  Barricaded by resentment.  It is obvious that a life which includes a deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness…

I am planning my trip to Australia.  The little dog will have to be in quarantine for 30 days and I fear that he will go mad without me.  I can visit him every day at the kennel but I know that he will hate it.  I would much prefer that he lived with someone he loved here whilst I am away.   Or..maybe I shouldn’t go.

Whilst I seem to report only the most catastrophic thoughts and feelings in this blog I am actually working hard in therapy to understand the consequences of my actions.  As a single man the consequences of watching porn, masturbation, hook ups etc, are few.   However, I had a delicious revelation at group therapy on Wednesday night.  I have struggled applying what I know to work in AA to my sex/love addiction.  I needed a key to unlock this conundrum.  Someone in the group shared that when he read the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous he replaces the word drink with think.  We have lost the ability to drink like normal people.  Becomes:  We have lost the ability to THINK like normal people.

I began to make my way through the Big Book replacing the word drink with think and suddenly began to totally embrace how I could make sense of my sex/love addiction.

Through the pain of the last few weeks as I hurtle away from Jake leaving him somewhere in the cosmos I have wilfully forgotten the solace I get from my commitment to sobriety in which ever form that takes.

Must remember to sweep the paths.